


to silver, to violet, to gold

by lethean



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Pining, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 15:13:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16065767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethean/pseuds/lethean
Summary: He glanced at Shiro, without meaning to.Shiro was looking at him. Or maybe ‘observing him’ was a more suitable phrase. He didn’t look away, even when their eyes met. There was a worried wrinkle between his eyebrows, but it only registered in Keith’s mind for a second before being replaced becauseoh.Shiro was beautiful.Keith and Shiro are long overdue a conversation about everything that has happened to them, but the universe refuses to give them the time.





	to silver, to violet, to gold

The blackness of space swallowed the Lions. Only the pinprick lights of stars, and a nebula, purple and yellow like a three-day-old bruise, broke the even tapestry, reminded Keith that he was not wrapped in a dark shroud but flying through the cosmos. Never had it felt more improbable that anything could exist beyond the shape of the Black Lion, whose consciousness weighed faintly in the back of his mind.

He tightened his grip on the controls and stared ahead, the movement of the stars blurring together into streaks of light. The ache in his cheek kept him grounded, reminded him to open his eyes each time they fell closed.

Krolia and the wolf rested in one corner of the cockpit, and Shiro was below, sleeping, hopefully. Keith’s fingers itched with the desire to let go of the controls, to go check on him.

He stayed put, but allowed himself a glance backwards in Shiro’s direction, despite the masses of metal separating them, and let it linger there for longer than necessary.

Shiro was fine. He was fine and that was all that mattered.

Later – a few minutes, an hour, a day later – when Keith’s eyes had fallen closed again, his eyelids sticking together, Allura’s voice broke through and he shook himself awake.

“Paladins, respond.”

“Here,” Keith said, thankful that the natural hoarseness of his voice covered his exhaustion.

Hunk and Pidge responded in kind.

“I’m awake!” Lance yelped after a few seconds of silence and a repetition of Allura’s original request.

“Good. But that confirms my suspicion. We have been flying for several days without stop. We need rest.”

“Did you have something in mind?” Keith asked. _We shouldn’t stop_ , a persistent voice whispered.

“There’s a planet not too far from here where we can land. It has an atmosphere, too, so we will be able to get out of our suits for a while.”

Keith reluctantly agreed, the rest did so with enthusiasm, and it was settled. Though they only flew for another thirty minutes, an hour at most, it felt suddenly like he had no more strength left in his body. He ached for sleep.

-

The Lions touched down on the gunmetal gray planet in a cloud of alien dust, and a familiar restlessness settled like armor around Keith’s bones. They did need rest, Allura was right, and there was little he could do to argue. And he didn’t _want_ to argue, either, but impatience was a habit he hadn’t kicked yet, even after two years.

Krolia jumped out the moment they landed, and the wolf teleported after quickly, leaving Keith to do a last check of the sensors.

“Are we there?”

The familiarity of the voice wrenched Keith out of his focus, and he swung around in his seat.

“I didn’t know you were awake, Shiro.”

Shiro stood, left arm braced against the wall, the other – hair a touch of violet in the gloom of the planet and the glow of the lights, his eyes crinkling softly at the corners.

“It’s a bit tough to sleep through a landing,” he replied with a shrug, a half-motion that made Keith avert his eyes. “Not to complain about your piloting skills, Keith.”

He said it as if he’d actually been sleeping, but the dark circles and his haggard appearance betrayed what they both knew: Shiro hadn’t slept properly since he was brought back. Keith hesitated, chasing half-begun thoughts through his mind, not sure how to say what he wanted to, or what he wanted to say at all.

“Are you sure you should be up?” he asked, finally, after a pause that stretched long enough to be awkward.

“I’m fine, Keith.”

Shiro said his name again. He’d been saying it a lot since he woke up. Or maybe he had always said it often, and Keith just hadn’t noticed before. But now he couldn’t help noticing. Each time, the weight of it made Keith’s thoughts grind to a halt, leaving him paralyzed, unable to do anything. He didn’t know how to respond, or why it had that effect on him. Trying to figure it out just left him unable to sleep, staring up at the metal hull of the Lion for hours, any conceivable answer evading him.

“Keith?”

“Huh? Oh …” Keith blinked at him, suddenly aware of how heavy his eyelids were. “I – do you want to go outside then?”

“Sure,” Shiro said, and smiled that familiar smile that made Keith’s chest tighten. “Lead the way.”

Shiro did that a lot lately. Deferred to Keith’s judgement, asked Keith to lead the way. Keith couldn’t tell if it was just Shiro’s way of acknowledging his status as the Black Paladin, or if it went deeper than that, if it was a sign of some underlying insecurity Shiro felt. He preferred to think it wasn’t the latter, for Shiro’s benefit. Or maybe it was for his own. If he refused to accept that things were different. That Shiro had –

Keith led the way out of the Lion, lifted a hand needlessly to steady Shiro when they stepped down from the ramp, but there was only gratitude reflecting softly in the depths of Shiro’s gray eyes.

The planet did have an atmosphere, but when Keith pulled off his helmet he was met by a dusty scent that made him want to put it on again. The landscape was as gray as it had seemed while landing: billowing gray dunes of sand or dust, littered with rocks that shaped into larger and larger mountains the further he looked, gray skies covered in thick but patterned clouds. The light that filtered though cast a solemn gloom over everything. Keith’s red armor stood out, a speck of color that didn’t fit. But Shiro seemed to almost merge with his surroundings, black, white, and silver as he was. He looked as if he could disappear into the gray, if Keith took his eyes off him.

Keith kept Shiro’s large shape at the edge of his field of vision, and shifted his position each time the man moved outside of it. Just in case, he reassured himself, when he began to feel ridiculous.

But Shiro stayed where he was, did not melt into the monochrome, and though Keith couldn’t shake the unease lodged in his throat, little by little the panic in his heartbeat eased.

None of the uncertainty Keith sometimes caught in Shiro’s movements carried over to his interactions with the others. His shoulders were relaxed, pushed back; his gaze was steady, his expression calm. Keith could pretend everything else was just something he’d imagined, that there was nothing wrong, if only until he was back alone in the cockpit of the Black Lion, staring out into infinity.

“Keith,” Allura said, and he turned to look at her, Shiro slipping from view. “You should be resting, not standing vigil.”

He blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t give me that. At least sit down.” Her eyebrows were pinched. “We should do something about that wound.”

“That’s not – I’m fine, Allura.”

Allura was not impressed by his reassurance. “What are you going to do if it becomes infected?”

“I’ve kept it clean,” Keith protested.

She just raised an eyebrow at him. “It will leave a large scar at this rate.”

Keith didn’t care about whether it left a scar or not. He’d never particularly cared about his appearance. Allura’s gaze told him she probably wouldn’t let him argue, and he sighed, letting his gaze flicker to where Shiro was standing with Coran.

The expression on Allura’s face was incomprehensible when Keith looked back at her.

“I am certain Shiro would feel better if the wound healed well,” she said after a moment. “He no doubt feels responsible –”

“Shiro had nothing to do with this,” Keith interrupted. “That wasn’t him”

“Do you think Shiro feels that way?”

Keith almost turned to look towards where he knew Shiro stood again, thirty feet behind him and a step to the left, as if on instinct, but stopped before it turned into more than a slight shift in his posture. Shiro wouldn’t think that, he tried to convince himself. Shiro knew it wasn’t his fault.

Shiro knew.

“Fine, do whatever you want, Allura,” Keith said with a sigh.

A small smile appeared in the corners of Allura’s mouth, and she quickly unscrewed the lid of a container Keith hadn’t noticed she was holding before. She scooped up some of the thick, blue goop inside.

“Tilt your head a little,” she told him as she stepped closer.

“I can do it myself,” Keith muttered.

“It will be faster if I do it.”

The goo was foul-smelling and slimy against his skin, but it cooled the burning of the wound which he had gotten so used to. Allura worked quickly, and finished with a last slide of her finger across his face, before pressing a bandage to it with nimble hands. The burning was gone, but the smell of the slime lingered in Keith’s nostril. He wrinkled his nose without meaning to.

“There, all done,” Allura said with a self-satisfied smile.

“Thank you,” Keith said.

“You’re welcome, but you don’t have to thank me. I’m happy to help. You should change the bandage often, and reapply this each time until it’s healed.”

Content that Keith would no longer be keeling over due to his injury, Allura wandered off in Romelle’s direction, leaving him standing there with the jar of healing goo in his hands, not sure what to do. He looked around for Shiro, but he was no longer where Keith had last seen him, and he whipped his gaze around the area.

The others had begun setting up a makeshift camp of sorts in the short time they’d been on the planet. Pidge sat tinkering with some kind of machine, with Hunk leaning over her shoulder. Lance and Coran were putting up some kind of shelter between two large boulders, and Krolia and the wolf were –

Shiro stood, half-leaning against a large rock, looking out over the dunes of gray dust. He didn’t turn to acknowledge Keith until he was almost at his shoulder.

“You okay?” Keith asked, the words almost catching in his throat.

“I’m good.” He glanced down at Keith wearing an unreadable expression. “I see your relationship with Allura has improved.”

Keith took a moment to answer that, frowning. Then he shrugged. “I guess Lotor made her reconsider some things.”

Shiro’s gaze flickered over his face, pausing at the bandaged scar, and his expression stuttered, changed into something fundamentally different, something Keith couldn’t parse.

“Keith, I –”

“Everyone!”  

Pidge’s voice tore through the air and whatever that moment had evolved to, and Keith and Shiro were at her side in a second.

“What is it?” Shiro asked.

Pidge pointed to the screen on her device. “I started this up ten minutes ago, and I was getting normal readings. But now, see this curve here? There’s something out there that’s affecting it.”

“What?”

“That’s the thing,” she said and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I have no idea.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Lance said. Even his sarcastic tone couldn’t cover up the worried twist to his mouth.

“Whatever it is, I’ve tracked down three sources. One to the northwest, one to the south, and one to the east.”

“We’ll go check it out then,” Keith said.

“Pidge and I will stay here and monitor the readings,” Hunk said. “If you, Lance and Allura could fly out, take a look and report back what you see, that be great.”

“We can do that.”

They nodded, and headed for their Lions. Shiro caught up to Keith when he was halfway to Black. Keith turned around and looked up at him, but Shiro didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“I’ll come with you. Can I?” The last was a tacked on uncertainty, one that Keith didn’t know yet how to push down.

“Sure,” he said instead, because Shiro was always welcome.

The Lion roared to life, lifting off the ground with such ease it was hard to remember he was in control of hundreds of tons of metal. Shiro loomed behind him, one hand – only hand – on the back of his seat, fingers twitching occasionally, a movement Keith couldn’t help keeping track of.

The coordinates Pidge gave them were located halfway around the planet, and though the Lion could cover that distance in no time at all, Keith had no idea what he was looking for. He kept an eye on the sensors, and on the ground beneath them, watching for anything that could be the source of the disturbance.

Shiro’s fingers twitched again. He had been quiet the entire time, and Keith wondered why he had come. Wondered if he wanted to fly again. He almost laughed at himself. Of course Shiro wanted to fly again. There was nothing he loved more, nothing he held more dear, than being a pilot, except perhaps being a paladin. And now he was neither.

The Lion no longer responded to Shiro.

Keith glanced at him from the corner of his eye, almost afraid of being caught. But Shiro didn’t notice. He stared out over the landscape that rushed past below them, eyes distant.

The sensor started to beep.

“What is that?” Shiro asked, leaning forward to take a closer look.

Keith frowned as the readings went haywire. “I don’t know.”

He opened the channel to Pidge. “Found the location of the disturbance, we’ll check it out.”

“Okay, be careful.”

The source came from the middle of an outcropping of large rocks at the edge of a mountain range, which forced Keith to touch down a little further away than he would have liked. The air outside was clouded with dust from the landing, and it took a moment for his vision to clear.

Shiro stepped out behind him, arm raised slightly to steady himself.

“Be careful,” he said, echoing Pidge.

Keith nodded.

There wasn’t anything to be careful about, though. All that was visible was gray dust and gray rocks and the gray dome of the sky far above them. No sound reached Keith’s ears except the crunching of their footsteps.

“There’s nothing here,” he said and frowned.

“There’s _something._ ” Shiro stopped, studied the readings. “There has to be.”

They split up to search. Keith had to tackle the voice in his head that protested, loudly, _don’t take your eyes off him he’ll disappear don’t let him out of your sight,_  and wandered around between the rocks, hand clenched around his bayard. The landscape dwarfed him, the rocks all at least twice his height, the mountains that covered the horizon so big they dominated the sky. But there was no life, and nothing moved except what was carried by the wind. If there was anything there tripping the sensors, Keith couldn’t see it.

He wandered for a while longer, before he stopped walking and just watched. Through the field of boulders he could see Shiro moving about with intent, scanning and cataloguing anything he could find that was amiss. Keith doubted he’d find much, but seeing Shiro so absorbed by a task made some of the tension that lingered around Keith’s shoulders fall away.

Shiro kneeled down by one of the rocks, and Keith jogged up to him.

“Find anything?” he asked when Shiro didn’t seem to notice his presence.

Shiro hummed and tapped on the rock. “There seems to be something in the ground, or in the rocks, that’s creating the disturbance. This sensor is too weak to pick up any details, though.”

That was disappointing. “I guess we can go back to the Lion and tell Pidge what you’ve found.

Shiro looked up at him. “I didn’t find anything, Keith.”

“More than me. Maybe we can bring in the Lion and see if her sensors can pick up on something we missed.

Keith offered a hand to Shiro. He considered it for a moment, before taking it in a firm grip, and Keith pulled him to his feet. Keith imagined he could feel the warmth of Shiro’s hand even through their suits, and the urge to not let go, to hold his hand the entire way to Black, overcame him. He wondered if Shiro would mind, if Shiro would let him.

Keith let go, and placed his hand briefly on Shiro’s shoulder. “Come on.”

Pidge wasn’t very excited over their findings. She sighed and stayed quiet on the other end of the line for several seconds after Keith relayed what they knew.

“None of the others have found anything either. Just … keep looking. It’s interfering with our communicators, and we can’t contact anyone at this rate. The Lions need to charge up a little, so we can’t just leave.”

“I’m gonna take Black in closer and see if we get anything more.”

“Thanks, Keith, Shiro.”

The Lion’s sensors were stronger, as Keith had suspected. He flew low over the jutting rocks, as close as he could get her, the readings fluctuating from high to low without much of a pattern. After ten minutes, Keith glanced up at Shiro’s face, and noticed his eyebrows were knitted in concentration. There were dark shadows under his eyes.

“You can sit down for a while,” Keith suggested. “It doesn’t seem like we’re gonna find much.”

“It’s fine.”

Keith was beginning to get tired of hearing that.

“You sure? You look like you could use a nap.”

Their eyes met. “I’m fine, Keith. But I guess you’re right. I’ve been pretty useless out here.”

Shiro said it with a soft laugh, and maybe he did mean it as a joke, but the words twisted like a knife in Keith’s heart, and he swiveled around to look properly at him, scanners forgotten.

“You’re not useless.”

Shiro made a vague gesture at the sensors.

“I haven’t been any help.”

“You’re _not_ useless, Shiro. And I wasn’t implying it, either.”

Shiro looked away from him, down at his hand. Keith wanted, needed, him to pay attention, and reached out to cover Shiro’s hand with his own, but Shiro pulled it closer to himself, almost as if he were guarding something vulnerable.

“I’m just worried,” Keith whispered, throat tightening around the words.

“You should be worried.” Shiro stared down at his palm in disgust. “This body already tried to kill you once. It might try again.”

There was a disconnect between what Shiro said and Keith’s brain, as if the words wouldn’t register properly. It took him a moment to wrap his head around it. He inhaled deeply to calm the fire that threatened to tear out of his throat.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know that.”

_“I_ meant it.”

“Shiro, I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be.”

It didn’t look like he was even considering what Keith was saying. This had been brewing for a long time. Keith stood up and took two long strides so he was right in front of Shiro.

“I’m not, and will never be, afraid of you,” he said, keeping his voice serious, despite the way his tongue felt leaden in his mouth.

Shiro’s eyes were dark in the low light, and with his head turned away, Keith couldn’t see the expression he wore clearly, but it twisted for a split second.

“Keith –”

“Keith!” Pidge’s voice crackled through the comms.

He tore himself away, reluctant to leave the conversation. Knowing Shiro, it would be difficult to breach the subject again.

“What is it?”

“I’m picking up a different kind of disturbance in your area, I think it might be some kind of storm. You may want to get out of there before it hits.”

“Got it,” Keith said, swung himself into the seat and grabbed the controls.  

The unexplained signals from before still dominated the readings the Lion picked up, but the storm Pidge talked about whirled in on the scanners from the side. From behind, he heard the intake of Shiro’s breath.

“Not sure we can outfly that.”

Keith turned his head to ask for an explanation, but he didn’t need to. Through the window he could see the front of swirling dust and clouds rapidly overtaking the horizon. Lightning flashed in the inferno, and he didn’t need to be told to push the Lion off the ground.

The sensors beeped brokenly and flickered, the readings from the storm extinguished all traces of anything else. Then they flickered once more and died.

The darkness of the storm was right on their tail, overtaking them so easily it was as if they weren’t moving at all.

Shiro was right. They couldn’t outfly it. Something icy cold made its way up his spine.

“Keith, we need to find shelter.” Shiro’s voice was tight and assertive, and wiped away Keith’s helplessness.

He thrust Black’s controls forward, throwing them into an almost-freefall, heading for the mountain range Keith knew was somewhere in front of them. The storm thundered. Keith only heard a sharp crackle before bright light flooded through the windows and blinded him.

The Lion rumbled in the back of Keith’s mind, as if answering the storm, but it was weak. Something was wrong. And when the light faded, he could see what. Before, only the sensors had been affected by the storm. Now all the control panels were losing power.

Keith opened a line to Pidge. “I don’t think we’ll make it back to camp.”

“What?” Pidge’s voice was breaking up. “Are you ok–”

The comms died.

The power surged. The purple lights flickered on and off.

Black went quiet in the back of Keith’s mind, and then they hurtled towards the ground.

A dull thud sounded behind Keith as he pulled the controls back with all his might, straining against the now useless metal. Nothing. There wasn’t even a glimmer of life in the Lion. He couldn’t see the ground beneath them through the swirling dust, but they plummeted towards it.

And there was nothing he could do.

“Shit.”

Through the thundering of the storm and the panic bubbling in his chest, he could just barely hear a muted groan from the rear of the cockpit. He ripped his eyes from the storm, and turned towards the sound.

Shiro was propping himself up against the wall, hand clutching the back of his head, face screwed up in a grimace.

The need to rush to his side overpowered Keith’s senses for a moment. He took a deep breath. Shiro was fine. He was fine.

Keith closed his eyes.

“You need to hold on to something,” he barked, harsher than intended, and turned back around.

_Come on_ , he thought, searching for Black where she usually lingered in his mind. There was a dead silence there. But she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. Just sleeping. If Keith could only wake her up, if only for a second, he could stop them from crashing into the rocks below.

He followed the dead connection further. _Please_ , he begged. But there was a wall between them, and it didn’t give. He pounded his fists against it and begged again.

The wall warmed under his fingers, and when he opened his eyes the wall was gone, but the controls radiated heat. He wrenched them back, and Black pulled out of the nosedive a fraction of an inch above the ground.

The heat dispersed, like smoke in a gust of wind, and the Lion hit the ground hard, almost throwing Keith onto the floor.

Keith sat, frozen, for a moment, triumph and relief battling for dominance in his chest. They’d done it. They’d –

Shiro.

No sooner had he thought it than he was on his knees next to the man, reaching to support him. Shiro groaned at the contact, but didn’t make to pull away.

Keith pulled off his gloves, and placed a hand on the side of Shiro’s head.

His hair was soft to the touch.

“You okay?” Keith asked, barely a whisper.

The cockpit was silent around them, the storm outside a distant roar. Each second that went by without an answer made it harder to breathe.

“‘m fine,” Shiro muttered after an eternity, and the breath in Keith’s lungs escaped so quickly it sounded almost like a sob.

Keith leaned forward and rested his head on Shiro’s shoulder. His eyes burned. The armor was hard and cold against his forehead, but he couldn’t move, exhaustion overcoming him like a wave, weighing his bones down like shackles.

“Keith?”

He couldn’t open his eyes.

“Keith?” The pitch of Shiro’s voice rose, and Keith felt something touch his arm.

Shiro’s hand was big, much bigger than Keith’s own, and he cursed his armor for being in the way.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Just tired.”

“Okay.” Shiro’s breath fanned out against his cheek. “Okay.”

It took ages – minutes or hours, Keith had no idea – before he regained enough strength to sit back and consider the situation. No light came in through the windows. The outside was a wall of darkness, and the storm didn’t seem to be abating at all. The Lion, too, was dark, and there was no response when Keith reached into his mind.

“I don’t think we’ll be flying anytime soon,” he said.

Shiro still leaned back against the wall, but Keith could barely make him out. He _could_ hear his strained breathing.

“Are you sure you’re fine?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”

Keith narrowed his eyes at Shiro’s dark shape, knowing he couldn’t see it, that it wouldn’t pull a confession out of him.

“You hit your head.” If Keith had to resort to speech, so be it.

“Just a bit. It stings a little, but it’ll feel better in a minute.”

Keith considered his alternatives. He could take Shiro’s word for it, leave it alone. He could wake up to Shiro unconscious. Unbreathing.

The thought took hold of him so suddenly he had to steady himself, bracing his hand against the wall just above Shiro’s shoulder, and bit his lip hard to distract from the way his stomach heaved.

No. Leaving it alone was not an option.

Keith placed one of his hands on the side of Shiro’s head and tugged him forward.

“Tell me if anything hurts,” he said.

“Keith, what –”

Keith gently pressed his fingers to the back of Shiro’s head.

For a second Shiro said nothing at all, but when Keith moved his fingers further down, he hissed in pain.

Shiro’s hair was wet beneath Keith’s fingers, and when he pulled away, they were sticky with what could only be blood. The metallic tang of it began to fill his nose.

Some of Keith’s earlier panic bubbled up again, and he couldn’t say or do anything at all, his hand clenching and unclenching. Shiro’s blood. Shiro’s blood. _Shiro’s_ blood was on his fingers and Keith could do nothing about it.

“You’re not fine,” was all he could get out.

Shiro sighed heavily. “There isn’t much we can do about it right now anyway.”

Keith knew that. He knew that, and yet –

With the wave of overwhelming exhaustion pulling back, Keith could again feel the burn of his cheek beneath the bandage. Allura had given him the healing goo. If he could find a way to clean Shiro’s injury, he could treat it.

Keith didn’t know if the goo worked on open wounds, but as long as it wasn’t toxic, he had nothing to lose. He left Shiro sitting where he was, got up to his feet with a muffled grunt and began rummaging around the cockpit.

Keith was too tired to fight with the doors leading out of the cockpit, which didn’t open automatically like they should, but after searching the place, he couldn’t find anything useful. The controls were dead, nothing responded, not to his touch or to his thoughts. After a few seconds of standing around and doing nothing, he tested the doors again.

Keith took out his knife, jammed it between the doors, and expanded the blade. It pushed them apart far enough that he could use the knife as leverage, and he pushed them open entirely, revealing the pitch black corridor beyond.

The doors didn’t immediately slide closed again, which he took as a good sign.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” he called over his shoulder, and braved the darkness.

Keith picked his way forward carefully, slowly. If he got hurt, Shiro would be all alone, stuck in the middle of nowhere.He made for the small storage space at the end of the corridor which would have the supplies he needed. Keith slid his hand over the wall as he went, both to keep himself steady and to find his way. The scent of blood clung to him thickly, and he had to stop and lean against the wall. He wasn’t normally squeamish, but this was different.

Shiro kept getting hurt. He kept getting hurt despite how hard Keith tried to prevent it. It was like no matter what he did, it would inevitably result in Shiro’s pain.

Keith just wanted to keep him safe. Happy. And yet he couldn’t do either.

He took a deep breath, walked the rest of the short way to the storage unit and pried it open. His limbs ached, and the desire to just sink down onto the floor and sleep was strong, but the desire to help Shiro was stronger. He gathered up a spare medkit, a bottle of water, some soft pieces of cloth and what he figured was some kind of emergency light. All the stuff filled his arms to the brim, and he had to move at a snail’s pace back to the cockpit so he didn’t drop anything. It was so quiet in the Lion, but as he got closer, he started hearing Shiro’s even breathing again, intermingled with muffled groans. He was in pain.

Keith fell to his knees next to Shiro and tilted his head so he could reach the injury.

“Careful,” Shiro breathed, and Keith could imagine the wrinkle between his eyebrows, the look of concentration, as he tried his best to conceal his discomfort.

“This might hurt a bit.”

Keith poured some water on the cloth, and dabbed at the back of Shiro’s head. He tried to be gentle, tried to ignore the way Shiro strangled the noises that attempted to escape his throat, but his hands were shaking and his arms were getting tired. With no light, he had no idea if the wound was clean or how serious it was, but he had wiped away as much of the blood as he could manage, and there likely wasn’t a clean spot left on the piece of cloth.

He fished the jar of goo out and unscrewed the lid slowly, painfully aware of how close to Shiro he was sitting. Though their armor separated them, Shiro’s shoulder pressed against Keith’s chest, Keith’s knees pressed against Shiro’s thigh, and Shiro’s breath was hot against Keith’s face and it almost overwhelmed him. _Did_ overwhelm him.

He’d never had trouble being close to Shiro before. Whether it was simple concern, which he was starting to doubt, or something else he didn’t have a word for yet didn’t matter: his heart was beating too quickly, too loudly, for the situation. Keith worried Shiro could hear it in the quiet, but if he did, he gave no indication.

He scooped up some of the goop, focused on the cool, slimy feeling of it on his fingers, and layered it thickly over the injury.

Shiro groaned at the touch, but then went quiet, as if the groan had escaped by accident. It was enough of an incentive for Keith to finish quickly. He wiped his hand on the bloodied cloth, and put the jar away. He wouldn’t be able to bandage it easily in the dark, so it would have to do for the moment.

“You okay?” he asked, worried that Shiro had passed out.

“I’m okay.” Then, softly: “thank you.”

Though there was more light in the cockpit than there had been in the corridor, due to the windows, Keith struggled with the emergency light. His fingers were still shaking a little, and the buttons were too small to easily get at. He pushed it aside roughly, and must have made some kind of sound, because he heard Shiro shifting.

“Keith, it’s okay. We’ll get out of here.”

“I know.” He exhaled harshly.

“You haven’t slept a lot lately. Maybe you should use this opportunity to do so.”

Keith shuffled closer to where Shiro was sitting, and leaned his head against the wall. He was exhausted. He was. But it wasn’t the kind of exhausted that would let him rest. With the storm, Shiro’s injury, Black’s silence, there was too much whirling through his mind.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep, even if I tried.”

Shiro said nothing in response, and so Keith sat still for another few moments, looking out at the swirling storm outside the Lion, fiddling thoughtlessly with the lamp he’d picked back up again. It clicked softly and flickered to life, and cast a soft yellow light around the cockpit.

Some of the weight that had settled around Keith melted away together with the oppressive darkness. He glanced at Shiro, without meaning to.

Shiro was looking at him. Or maybe ‘observing him’ was a more suitable phrase. He didn’t look away, even when their eyes met. There was a worried wrinkle between his eyebrows, but it only registered in Keith’s mind for a second before being replaced because _oh_.

Shiro was beautiful.

And that was not a thought that had ever occurred to Keith before, not consciously.

In the light of the lamp, Shiro’s skin turned to gold, and his eyes were so dark they swallowed Keith whole. He looked softer. Younger. Perhaps the solid gray of his hair was the reason, or the way the light smoothed out his scar, but whatever the cause, it devastated Keith, in an intoxicating way. His thoughts ground to a halt, and Shiro, not his injury, not worry for his well-being, just Shiro, filled them to the brim, until they overflowed and he was sure it showed clearly on his face.

Keith had always known Shiro was handsome, like a real-life Adonis, he’d heard other cadets whisper back at the Garrison, but he’d never been so aware of it before.

He looked away, down at the lamp in his hands, studying the mechanism he’d had such trouble with.

“You look tired,” Shiro said then, after an eternity.

“I am tired.”

“You should rest for a while.”

Keith felt a familiar prickling traveling up the inside of his skin, like an itch that was impossible to soothe, and knew sleep was off the table. And definitely not with Shiro so close to him.

“Not right now,” was all he said, and Shiro didn’t argue.

Keith was too tired to contemplate what it meant to think of your best friend as beautiful.

He managed, with a bit of nudging, to bandage Shiro’s injury, if only to give himself something to do, and he felt better when it was done. Whatever worry still lingered in the back of his mind could be ignored.

Shiro’s blood no longer coated his fingers, but still stained them, uneven patches of red, like tiny nebulas, coating his palm and the back of his hand, caked under his nails. It would have been a waste of water to wash them, so he left them be, tracing the patterns over and over again with his eyes.

He sat like that, silent, still, for a long period of time. Shiro didn’t stir much next to him. Two inches of empty space separated them, and Keith was overcome by the desire to both move closer, eliminate the distance, and to move further away, to the other side of the cockpit so he might stop being so conscious of Shiro’s presence. Neither desire won, and he stayed where he was, restlessness manifesting in other ways. He tapped his fingers in a rhythm against his leg, softly enough that it wouldn’t be bothersome. After a while, one of his feet joined in.

The silence became awkward. Heavy. Keith wanted to say something, anything, but no words presented themselves to him. He wanted to reassure Shiro – he just didn’t know how to frame it so it wouldn’t seem patronizing, or cruel, or insensitive.

He didn’t want to hurt Shiro more than he already had.

But that caught him in a never-ending circle, and the silence stretched for longer and longer until he was sure Shiro had to be asleep. When Keith glanced to the side, however, Shiro still sat there, eyes open, blinking slowly, watching the storm raging outside.

He noticed Keith looking, and his lips parted, as if he was going to say something, but nothing came out. After a while, he pressed his mouth together and frowned.

Keith had to speak.

“Shiro –” he said at the same time as Shiro said “Keith –”

Keith snapped his jaw shut so Shiro could keep going.

“You go first,” Shiro said, finally, and all the thoughts, all the half-begun speeches, in Keith’s mind scattered.

He was completely empty. Nothing came to him. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.

“No, go ahead,” he muttered, when it occurred to him he had to say _something_.

Shiro didn’t … didn’t look all too happy about that. He closed his eyes and sighed, heavily, like he’d been holding his breath for a long time. Keith could feel his heart rate pick up, his palms turned clammy. _After we get out of here, I will never talk to you again_ , he would say.

_I don’t want to be your friend anymore._

_You’ve ruined my life._

_You let me die._

His eyes burned. A sense of finality settled over him. This was it.

“Keith,” Shiro whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Everything would be over, he would never –

What?

“What?” he croaked, repeating his thought out loud.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Shiro’s voice was thick, it sounded like he was about to cry, and that was – no, that was so much worse than anything Keith had imagined.

Shiro raised his hand and brushed it lightly, carefully, just beside the bandage on Keith’s cheek. Keith could barely breathe.

“I almost killed you. I could have – I _wanted_ to kill you. And I almost did.” Shiro pulled his hand back and pressed it to his eyes, covering them.

“That wasn’t you,” Keith said, desperately, pulse racing, but Shiro shook his head.

“It was this body. The memories … I remember it so clearly. Every time I close my eyes, I see you laying there, and I’m so close to –”

It felt like a punch to the gut. Shiro’s mouth twisted as he spoke, and Keith needed to say something. Needed to stop him from talking. He pressed his hand to Shiro’s shoulder, turned towards him.

“I cut your arm off,” he said, the words all jagged edges, even though he meant them as an apology.

Shiro dropped his hand from his face, eyes wide and slightly shiny and fastened on Keith like he was a lifeline.

“I cut your arm off,” he said again, helplessly, voice cracking. “And you’re apologizing to _me_?”

“You,” Shiro began, cut himself off. “You had no choice. You had to stop me. I was going to kill you.”

“You didn’t have a choice either, Shiro. You didn’t kill me. I’m right here.” He moved his hand closer to Shiro’s neck. “We made it.”

Keith gave him a small smile, tried to make it encouraging. Shiro looked at him a moment longer, before he turned away and rubbed at his eyes.

“You saved me again,” he mumbled, almost too quiet to hear. “How many more times am I going to force you to save my life?”

Warmth spread like a firework in Keith’s chest, flowed through his veins until it enveloped his entire body. It burned the remaining anxiety to ash, and he couldn’t help it when his smile widened.

“I’d spend the rest of my life saving you. If you’d let me.”

Shiro started, hand dropping to his lap, and he stared at Keith, dark eyes fastening on his own. That had come out a little heavier than he’d intended. But it was true. He wouldn’t take the words back, refused to regret them. He met Shiro’s stare evenly.

“Keith,” Shiro said, hesitant, as if he didn’t know how to continue. “When we were – fighting, you said – you said you –”

He broke off, licked his lips.

“Did you mean it?” he asked, and he looked so open, so vulnerable, Keith knew if he didn’t answer properly, honestly, it would crush him.

“I did. I meant it.”

“You called me your brother,” he whispered. “Even back with the Blade of Marmora, you said – you said I was like a brother to you.”

Keith frowned. It had felt true at the time. But he’d spent so long with his mother, and now, with Shiro right in front of him, the words felt more like habit than truth. Shiro wanted the truth, and it was dawning on Keith so clearly he didn’t understand how he’d misinterpreted it for so many years.

“I did call you my brother,” Keith said. “I haven’t had a family for a long time, and I’ve known you for a long time, too. You believed in me. You helped me. You supported me. And that meant _everything_ to me, Shiro. I didn’t have anything to compare you to, that was the only term that made sense to me.”

Shiro still looked at him, hanging off his every word, worrying his lower lip with his teeth and that was definitely not the kind of thing Keith needed to distract him.

“After Kerberos, after you came back …  whatever I felt back then, right now I don’t think of you as my brother.”

Keith had never been good at expressing his feelings, but he ignored every part of himself that screamed at him to stop, to slow down, to think about it first.

“When I said I loved you, _that’s_ what I meant. I love you, Shiro.”

“Oh,” was all Shiro said for several seconds.

His face was full of wonder, all directed at Keith, and it made his chest tighten.

Shiro reached for his hand, and laced their fingers together. Looked down at where they connected. A small smile played on Shiro’s lips, the first one in a long time, and Keith _wanted._ But he didn’t know what.

“Oh,” Shiro said again, and when he met Keith’s gaze his smile widened, and he laughed.

He looked so relieved, like all his burdens had lifted from his shoulders, and Keith hadn’t seen him like that in years. His own mind calmed, and something bubbled in his chest, and it wasn’t until he started laughing too that he realized what it was.

There were things they still needed to talk about, things they hadn’t addressed. But that could come later. Right now, he was happy.

He was so happy he could burst.

 -

When Keith woke up, it was to dim light and silence, the imprint of Shiro’s hand still warm in his palm. He flexed his fingers and ached for its presence, feeling ridiculous but not sure how to stop. Not sure he wanted to.

Shiro wasn’t in the cockpit. Unease rose within him, and he got to his feet, stretching, his muscles stiff from sleeping on the hard floor. His armor lay in a pile next to his feet, but he didn’t feel like putting it back on, and instead grabbed his knife. Just in case.

With a glimpse out the window, he could see a familiar figure standing on the crest of the hill below and he made that his destination.

The air was cold and sharp in his lungs and against his skin, and he shivered despite trying not to. Dust rose in clouds around his feet as he walked towards Shiro. He stopped a few paces away, and looked at him. In the gloom of pre-dawn, and the faint light of the stars, Shiro’s hair turned to strands of silver, and the metal of his shoulder glittered.

Shiro stood there, a little smaller without his armor but shoulders just as broad, facing the horizon. His eyes were fixed on the night sky above a mountain range so far away fog obscured everything except the jagged peaks. He didn’t acknowledge Keith’s approach, nor did he seem to hear him.

With an extra step, they stood side by side.

After a moment of silence, Shiro glanced down at him and smiled, before turning back to the sky.

“Sleep well?” Shiro asked, tone deeper than usual, like he’d just woken up. It sent a pleasant shiver up Keith’s spine.

“Yeah,” he said, the answer honest for the first time in weeks. “You?”

“I did. No nightmares.”

“What are you doing out here?”

Shiro shrugged. “I woke up. The storm had passed, and you were still sleeping. I wanted to look at the stars.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” Shiro said, and his voice was so warm Keith wouldn’t mind listening to it forever.

Instead they stood without speaking, watching the stars high above them. Keith traced them, creating imaginary constellations as he went, wondering if Shiro was doing the same. He wanted to know what he was thinking about, what he was feeling, but the silence was so perfect breaking it would be a sin.

And Shiro – Shiro looked so peaceful. As if there was nothing wrong in the world.

Keith didn’t know how long they stayed like that, side by side, but eventually dusty pink colored the horizon. The colorless landscape turned from dark gray to violet, and when he turned to look at Shiro, he saw the same was true of him.

“It’s dawn,” he said, for no other reason than that he wanted to speak.

Shiro hummed in response.

Keith reached out, brushed his fingertips against Shiro’s knuckles, and Shiro, without hesitation, took his hand and held it. He kept his eyes on the sky, but there was a smile on his lips, and he squeezed Keith’s hand.

Pink turned to gold, and Shiro stepped closer, until their arms touched and they were shoulder to shoulder. A pleasant lull spread through Keith, restlessness gone without a trace, the weight of Black’s consciousness in the back of his mind.

“Keith.”

He looked up at him, tilted his head, felt the wind playing through his hair. Shiro looked at him like there was nothing else in the universe.

The sun slowly rose above the mountains and turned the landscape to gold.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfiction I've written for Voltron, and the first fanfiction I've posted online since around 2010, so I'm very excited and very nervous at the same time. I've been working on this one on and off since July, and it's a lot longer than I thought it would be, but it's finally finished!


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